One of the Very Earliest Cadillac Green Country Clubs!

This Cadillac of Country Clubs weighs just 7.40 lbs. with a huge nut width of 1 3/4 inches, a wonderful fat neck profile, and a scale length of 25 1/2 inches. Rock maple body with two large single-bound f-holes, three-piece maple/ebony/maple neck, white-and-black-bound Brazilian rosewood fretboard with 21 frets and inlaid pearl block position markers. Headstock with inlaid pearl Gretsch "T-roof" logo and small truss-rod cover. Individual Grover Roto-Matic tuners with oval metal buttons. Two DeArmond Gretsch Dynasonic (Fidela-tone), single coil pickups, with outputs of 3.27k and 3.07k. Earliest version gold Lucite over tortoiseshell pickguard. Three controls on the lower treble bout (volume for each pickup and master tone) and one control on the cutaway bout (master volume) plus one three-way pickup selector switch on upper bass bout. Earliest style metal "plain-top" knobs with cross-hatch pattern on sides. Melita Synchro-Sonic bridge and "G" cutout tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This guitar is totally unfaded and in near mint condition. Original Gretsch rectangular white label with the model number "6196" stamped in black, and the serial number "13236" stamped in red, inside bass "f" hole. A spectacular example. Housed in the original Gretsch two-tone gray hardshell case with maroon plush lining (9.25). Included in the case is the following 'case-candy'… Original "Telling You How" Gretsch folding hang-tag; original "Fred Gretsch Mfg. Co." circuit diagram; original "Gretsch Guitar Polishing Cloth" in original plastic cover; original case key i original envelope, and to complete the package - an early manuscript version of the words for Guy Mitchell's "Rock-a-Billy" which for those of us that remember - reached number 10 in 1957!!!!

This guitar was most certainly one of the very first Cadillac Green 6196's to be shipped by the Gretsch factory. It has all of the features of the earliest models - the small truss-rod cover, theb plain top control knobs with the cross-hatch pattern sides, and the 'unengraved' tortoiseshell and gold lucite pickguard secured to the side of the body and the side of the neck, as opposed to the side and top of the body.

"The Country Club was in many ways Gretsch's most traditional guitar...[and] also among the company's best. Among Gretsch's first commercially successful electrics, the Country Clubs were directly descended from the 6030 and 6031 of the Synchromatic line, which were in turn directly descended from the pre-war 'cat-eye' Synchromatic 300. In other words, the 6192 and 6193 Country Clubs were 17-inch pedigreed jazz boxes when they were introduced in 1951. They were the largest Gretsch electric models, other than the White Falcon, and the only guitars in the line other than the Falcon to use a spruce top, although spruce is rarely found after '55" (see The Gretsch Pages at http://www.gretschpages.com/models/6192club/index.php).

"The Cadillac Green Model 6196 Country Club that graced the cover of the 1955 catalog along with other Gretsch dazzlers was jazz guitar perfection itself, a heady combination of functionality and sparkling color. Introduced in 1954 the metallic-green beauty presented all the features characteristic of the 1955 Club. The now all-maple 17-inch-wide, 3 1/2-inch-deep, 25 1/2-inch scale length, true f-hole body is multiple-bound, top and back… In 1955, the Club's tortoise shell plastic pickguard is replaced with a gold Lucite 'guard pantograph-engraved from the underside with a radiused 'Gretsch' block letter logo" (Jay Scott, The Guitars of the Fred Gretsch Company, p. 45).